


Finality  (Torture)

by MesmiraculouslyMirthful



Series: Goretober [10]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12329487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MesmiraculouslyMirthful/pseuds/MesmiraculouslyMirthful
Summary: The Signless was not stupid. He knew that, regardless of what he said or did, he was going to die.





	Finality  (Torture)

Kankri Vantas was weeping. His chest heaved in uneven bursts as he took in quick irregular gasps of air, trying not to give his captors the joy of hearing him scream. Even his sobs were mostly silent, though a handful of them had passed his lips in sharp and wet bursts like the beginning of a sermon. Tears and snot ran down his face, leaving tracks of translucent red across his cheeks and clear mucus to drip from his chin.

It was cold in the room and incredibly damp. This was in direct contest to the day before, when the heat and humidity had laid heavy in the chamber. His head throbbed and he was uncertain if the pain was from the lack of sleep and blinding lights that he had been subjected to, or if it was a residue from the red hot needles that had been jammed into his hornbed the night before.

He was cuffed to an angled table, his hands high above his head. The straps bit into the skin of his wrists and ankles just enough to hurt but not enough to numb his extremities.

The Carnifex paced in front of him, the white of her paint set in stark relief upon her face. The purple and black lines of her subjugglator uniform were crisp and even, spotless in spite of the blood she had drawn. Behind her, on a palanquin made of gold, sat both Her Imperious Condescension and the Grand Highblood. The two were laughing and eating out of a bowl filled with grubcorn. They watched him with amusement, occasionally calling out requests to his torturer, who would dutifully oblige.

Kankri had tried to speak to them, at first. He had pleaded for Meenah and Kurloz to listen to him, but to no avail. If anything his familiarity in using their hatchnames had only spurred them to greater heights of sadism. Whatever it was that he remembered of them, whatever it was they could have become, had no place in their hearts now.

The Signless was not stupid. He knew that, regardless of what he said or did, he was going to die. He also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would be a public execution and not in this show of secretive savagery. 

That fact brought to him no comfort, only a deep and abiding sense of hopelessness.

The Carnifex placed a chair on front of him and sat down, her knee brushing his foot, and pulled a small hammer, a strangely blunt and curved piece of metal, and a pair of silver pliers from her sylladex. She smiled up at him showing him the tools she had chosen as she laid them out on a tray with care.

“Recant,” She commanded. Both the Grand Highblood and the Condesce quieted, their faces set with wide grins.

_”Never_ ,” Kankri said. It was the same response he had given the last time the Carnifex had given this command, and the same he had given all the times before. It was the same response he would give in the future as well. 

Kankri was not stupid. He was an aberration, a mutant. There was nothing he could give them that would stop the torture, and so nothing was what he intended to give them. His cooperation would not make him any less of a target to be made an example of.

She nodded her head, having expected the answer. Her fingers stroked the top of his foot, her touch cold and clinical at first, before she gripped his foot hard and slipped the very top of the blunt metal probe under the nailbed of his smallest toe.

“Recant,” She commanded again.

_”Never_ ,” Kankri said again. He shook his head and the action caused a wave of dizziness to wash over him. Another nod, this one more curt. The Carnifex picked up her hammer with the hand not holding both his foot and the probe in place. She waved it slowly in front of him, first in one direction and then in the other, before flicking her wrist. The movement sent the head of the hammer smashing against the butt of the probe, which was in turn shoved deeply into the skin of his nail bed. 

All of the muscles in his leg spasmed. Kankri gasped in sudden pain, the sensation sending a bolt of agony through his body to pound through his head. She hit the prone again and it buried itself even deeper, prying his toenail up. He tried to pull his leg away but the straps holding it in place held form. Humming thoughtfully, the Carnifex grabbed her pliers and began to wiggle the nail back and forth. He choked back a scream and moaned low in pain, every muscle in his body twitching.

“Tell us someone bout the otter rebels, pike where they hidin?” The Condesce called from her seat. He shook his head. He would not betray those that had managed to escape the raid that had caught him and his family. 

The Carnifex looked to the Grand Highblood. He waved a lazy hand at her in a _go ahead_ gesture before putting a fistfulbof grubcorn in his mouth.

She ripped the pliers back in time with the Grand Highblood’s wave, freeing Kankri’s nail with a sharp tug. He screamed, really and truly screamed, as bright scarlet blood welled up where his toenail used to be. She set the pliers down and picked up the hammer again, only to smash it down directly upon his toe with a sickening crack.

“One,” She counted. “Now, repent.”

Kankri did not answer her with words. He screamed.


End file.
